Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into […]
The Use of Lubricant Read More »
Boxed sets seem to be an either/or thing for readers. Either you love ’em or hate ’em. I tend to lean toward the “pass, thank you” side of the fence, because I’m so nerdy, I prefer to have each individual book listed in my ebook reader, than a thick single file. And usually, the cover
A boxed set for binging! Read More »
I get a lot of mail from readers asking for technical help, usually for very simple things like uploading books to their readers. A lot of these same readers add something along the lines of “I’m not very computer savvy…” Surprisingly, it’s not just my romance readers who say this. I’m probably typecasting/profile wildly when
Why It Pays To Be (A Little Bit) Geeky Read More »
I’ve been reading all the social network posts about the Covid19 lockdowns and social distancing, and the many ways people have discovered or invented to keep themselves occupied. Singing opera on balconies, building Lego cities…there’s been some amazing ideas (here and here for some of them). My own response has been very cliched: When I
Some site changes you might have noticed. Read More »
When I was still “just” a reader, (I’m still a reader, it’s just not all I do anymore), I used to marvel at what I thought were the complexities of the publishing world. I mean, how did they figure out what stories to publish? How did they set up the type in books so
How the Book Industry Used to Work and How it Works Now Read More »
Did you roll your eyes at that one? It’s okay if you did, because sometimes, I roll my eyes at that, too. There’s too much hard work, mental sweat and sheer discipline involved in getting a book written for it to ever just ‘fall out’ of a writer, yet there are an awful lot of
Books Falling Everywhere…. Read More »
I’ve received emails from readers who trip over the numbering system in my series. I admit that if you’ve never seen that sort of series numbering before — I call it digital numbering — it can look a little strange, but there are very good reasons for numbering the series the way I do,
How I Number Series…and Why Read More »
Fellow author Terry Mixon just bought out the first book in a brand new military SF series so I thought I’d give you a heads up. They thought they could force her to conform. They were wrong. Inside a dystopian school in the Singularity, the twelve-year-old girl known as One Twenty-Four struggles to survive. Failure
New Military SF from Terry Mixon Read More »
Covers are amazing things. They give a book substance and make it feel real. For example, even though you’ve seen the title of book 3 in the Imperial Hammer series written in the blurb all the way back when the first book came out, until now it’s just been a title. But now there’s a
Cover! Cover! The next Hammer cover is here. Read More »
Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime–and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows. Robert A. Heinlein – The Notebooks of Lazarus Long _____________________________ This Heinlein quote has become a personal mission of mine. I first read Time Enough for Love (the book from which nearly all
Minimize Your Therbligs Read More »